Profit margins are terrible compared to regular cigarettes. A pack can be manufactured for $0.06. You have a built in customer base with huge profit margins and massive brand loyalty. While tobacco bought into ecigs, they can't keep up with tech. As soon as smoking is technology, then the brands can be disrupted. Better to kill off vaping.

The closed systems that "Big Tobacco" are into - the stuff that sells at corner stores and gas stations, with prefilled pods/cartomizers - is incredibly high-profit. I'd look at the tobacco industry if the push was towards closed systems, but they seem to be largely singled out as the enemy.

There are two better places to look: the pharma industry and their collection of minimally-successful smoking cessation products; and governments that are looking at enormous revenue loss, especially those that have already spent funds from the Master Settlement Agreement. (It may be worth noting, as well, that the loudest anti-smoking orgs are also getting their funding from the MSA. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see combustible tobacco disappear, but there are people of the like of Stanton Glantz who've rather enjoyed the funding, and who have demonstrably lied in their opposition to vaping.)

Big tobacco are investing heavily, so I doubt it: https://www.investopedia.com/news/which-company-behind-popul...

Like I mentioned in my post I dont doubt they have skin in the e-cig game. However the music industry is also heavily invested in online streaming but I'm sure they would all love to go to the days of $20 CDs.

Exactly. The big tobacco companies, while playing in the e-cig space, would MUCH rather see it go away. They completely own the tobacco market. They have a never ending stream of competitors in the e-cig space.

I've considered this. There's also a huge existing industry and lobbyists whose existence depend solely on the notion that smoking is bad. If everyone stops smoking and starts vaping, they've got nothing to do anymore, no one to get donations or funding from. They're incentivized to create a new boogyman to fight against (e-cigarettes) in order to remain relevant.

I'm thinking of organizations like Truth, D.A.R.E., that sort of thing.

That's all a bit conspiratorial though and I have no evidence to support it.